First drive: 2012 Mercedes-Benz SLS AMG Roadster

Wingless warrior

By Gabriel Gélinas, Postmedia News

Originally published: September 29, 2011

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Cap-Ferrat, France • It’s the sound that gets you. With the top down, the SLS AMG Roadster becomes a wingless wonder with a very loud and wicked soundtrack that will stir your soul.

The SLS AMG Coupe already introduced the notion that a German supercar could sound almost exactly like a NASCAR Sprint Cup race car, but, when driven with the top down, the Roadster turns it up a notch. Think of the movie This is Spinal Tap when the Nigel Tufnel character explains that the band’s amplifier volume settings go up to 11 and you’ll get the idea.…

The Roadster replaces the fixed roof and the über-cool gullwing doors of the Coupe with a folding Z-shaped three-layer soft-top — which can be raised or lowered in 11 seconds and at speeds up to 50 kilometres an hour — as well as two conventional doors. The proportions and overall dimensions of the Roadster are identical to those of the Coupe, so you get the same very long hood and short rear deck, but the Roadster looks more low-slung with the top down. To compensate for the lack of a fixed roof, additional bracing has been added to the dashboard, the door sills have been reinforced and the car gets extruded aluminium cross- members with fixed roll bars as well as stabilizing struts between the rear suspension towers. The end result is that the Roadster’s body structure is very stiff. Yet the new car weighs just 40 kilograms more than the Coupe, which effectively means that it is just as fast. AMG engineers claim the Roadster will reach 100 km/h in 3.8 seconds and run all the way up to a top speed of 330 km/h, performance numbers that are identical to those of the Coupe.

The Roadster’s soundtrack and performance figures emanate from the same 6.3-litre V8 (actually, its exact displacement is 6,208 cubic centimetres) as found in the Coupe, with power rated at 563 horsepower and torque at 479 pound-feet. The Roadster also features the same AMG Speedshift seven-speed dual-clutch gearbox with gear ratios that are also identical to the Coupe’s. On the run through the Alpes Maritimes region of southern France, the Roadster gave an amazing display of immediately available torque, dispatching slower traffic in the blink of an eye. Using the shift paddles when approaching hairpins meant rapid-fire downshifts accompanied by loud bursts of revs as the throttle was expertly blipped, but you could also easily cruise around using only third gear and the massive torque of the engine to effortlessly pull you out of corner apexes.

The Roadster also introduces two new features to the SLS AMG lineup. The first is the AMG ride control system featuring electronically adjustable shocks with three damping settings: Comfort, Sport and Sport Plus. Selecting the Comfort setting effectively means that the SLS AMG Roadster feels very much like an SL63 AMG, so think of it as the “trophy wife” setup. Firming up the dampers allows the Roadster to carve through corners in a more direct and responsive fashion, while selecting the Sport Plus or Manual setting on the driving mode dial will cut shift time in half, down to less than 100 milliseconds. Also newly introduced with the Roadster is the AMG Performance Media system that takes over the navigation screen to display digital reproductions of analogue gauges that monitor everything from power and torque outputs to cornering g-forces. You can also use the lap timer function and download the data to a USB stick to review your performance after a race track run.

With the top down, the cabin of the SLS AMG Roadster feels more spacious than the Coupe’s. The AirScarf system, which blows warm air on your neck and was originally introduced on the SLK, is also present on the Roadster as standard equipment. What is lacking on the Roadster are the ventilated seats found on other Mercedes-Benz models. When queried about this, Thomas Rappel, head of product management at AMG, responded that the SLS Roadster was a true sports car and did not require this comfort feature, all the while specifying that this had been saved for the new SL, which is slated to arrive shortly.

No pricing information was released by Mercedes-Benz Canada at the Roadster’s launch, as that number will be decided closer to the car’s arrival in Canada, which is slated for October or November of this year.